Ancient Rome (pt. 3)

A staple of Ancient Roman artwork is murals, which are large pictures painted directly on walls.  These walls were the interior walls of private civilian homes, and the murals were generally of landscapes or buildings.  The paintings made it look as if the wall was a window into another place.  Although many of them are plain, simple household images, the art element introduced here will later become known as trompe l'œil, which is French for ("fooling the eye").  The images were meant to look three-dimensional and totally real as if the mural really were a window showing viewers actual objects on the other end.  Here is a mural of some peaches with a vase of water.  Notice the light reflecting off the water vase?  So realistic!

The city layout during Ancient Rome is what we still follow today—parallel and perpendicular streets, facing North-South (cardo, the Romans called these), or East-West (decumanus).  The place of meeting (called a forum) would be located on the intersection.  A typical forum included shops as well as the primary religious and civic buildings—Senate house, records office, and a basilica.

Ancient Rome (pt. 2)

Ancient Roman art is another story.  The Romans were obsessed with Greek art, and they copied the style whenever they could.  They purchased artwork from Greece and even imported many Greek artists.  This is why there is so much Greek influence seen in Roman art and architecture.  The original statues made by Greek sculptors like Polyclitus and Myron have been lost; and the ones we have today are Roman copies (of which there are many).  In fact, it could be said that Roman art was merely a copy of Greek art, but for a few changes.

The Romans, like the Greeks, loved idealized bodies of young athletes to show power and domination; however, they believed that a person's true character was to be seen in the person's face.  And as Greek artists had to satisfy the tastes of their patrons, the result was young athletic bodies with old heads.

Eventually, the Romans realized that it was cheaper just to make busts (head portraits) instead of whole body portraits.  Since they cared so much about faces, many busts appear during this time.  And not all of these were public works of art.  Sometimes a bust was made for the private purpose of remembering a deceased loved one in a particular family.  The Romans introduced "death masks" at this time, which were busts cast from an imprint of the actual head of a corpse, giving the exact image of the deceased's face.  Realism enters the scene, as people want to remember the images of others as how they really looked, wrinkles and all.  Where the Greeks tried to exaggerate the human physique tout entier, the Romans focused on specific traits unique to each person.  The art had become realistic, lifelike, and personal.

Also note the appearance of common people in art.  More or less up till now, hierarchic scaling has pointed out the king or ruler who we are supposed to look at in a piece of art, but many Roman busts are of common citizens.  This fresco shows an ordinary baker and his wife.

Ancient Rome (pt. 1)

In 509B.C., Rome established a Republic.  The mythological story of the founding of Rome is probably a familiar one to you: Remus and Romulus, two brothers raised by a she-wolf, the latter of whom kills the former and founds Rome.  In actuality, Rome began with a tribe of people called Latins, since they were from Latium (in modern-day central-western Italy), and after a long period of warring with neighboring tribes (namely the Samnites and Etruscans), the Latins took Rome and began to form an independently wealthy city.  The new Roman leaders decided to invest in a strong army, and the Roman government instituted a Senate in supreme authority.  (The Ancient Roman Senate was the basis from which the United States' founding fathers took much influence in forming their nation's government).  Of course there was the Roman Caesar, who claimed kingship by divine right (by claiming to be the descendant of some god or other); here is Caesar Augustus (Octavian), who claimed to be a descendant of Venus, with the god Cupid tugging on the edge of his tunic.

By 300B.C., the Roman Empire had control over most of the Italian peninsula, and it eventually became the largest empire in history.  In 200A.D., the Roman sphere of influence included basically all of Europe, an enormous chunk of the Middle East, and a vast strip of Northern Africa.  For all intents and purposes, this is arguably the grandest civilization the world has ever known.

Ancient Greece (pt. 13)

I don't mind thinking of Minoa as the historical equivalent to Atlantis, but I'm no scholar and am probably good with it just because I've always been fascinated with the myth ever since my imagination was sparked reading The Magician's Nephew, C. S. Lewis's epic fantasy, in which the character Uncle Andrew explains the following to his nephew in the second chapter:

"Ah—that was a great day when I at last found out the truth.  The box was Atlantean; it came from the lost island of Atlantis.  That meant that it was centuries older than any of the stone-age things they dig up in Europe.  And it wasn't a rough, crude thing like them either.  For in the very dawn of time Atlantis was already a great city with palaces and temples and learned men."

Not too accurate, but then again the myth of Atlantis is such that gets fantasized all the time.  It is almost like El Dorado, or Mars, or the Garden of Eden itself—everybody has their own opinions about its history, about what it could have been like.  And it is fun to make up stories about it, like Lewis did.  Even Tolkien (a close friend of Lewis's) made a fantasy version of the Atlantian myth to put in his own stories of Middle Earth (the island of Numenor shares several characteristics of Atlantis).  Lewis actually wrote a lot about Atlantis.  (I know we're way off topic, but I'm there now, so I'm just gonna keep going).  He always referred to it as a "mythology," however, not a historical fact or even a possibility.  An entry in his diary from 1922 tells of a conversation he had with a friend of his, Dr. John Askins ("the Doc"):

"He talked about Atlantis, on which there is apparently a plentiful philosophical literature: nobody seems to realise that a Platonic myth is fiction, not legend, and therefore no base for speculation."

Perhaps not.  Since then more archaeological discoveries have been made.  But whether there was a real Atlantis or not, it's still just fun to imagine (and I think Lewis and Tolkien would have agreed with me there).  It's fun to make up stories about it and think about how cool it would be to ride on one of those super fast flying fishes that they have in the Disney movie (heehee).

Ancient Greece (pt. 12)

It's evident that the Minoans were a highly advanced civilization.  So, what happened to them?

The evidence shows us that the entire civilization came to a sudden end around the 15^th century B.C.  (The Exodus from Egypt is dated around this time).  Scholars disagree over whether the Minoans were destroyed by a volcano eruption (the nearby Santorini volcano) or tidal wave, or a combination of the two.  Both the tidal wave and volcanic eruption were probably caused by a massive earthquake that is said to have taken place around that time.  Whatever it was, it was a natural disaster of apocalyptic proportions that wiped the Minoans off the map, although it may not have been altogether instantaneous, as some historians believe.  Sources for information are scarce, but one History Channel documentary on the subject claimed some Minoan survivors may have had time to flee north, and that there was some proof of Minoan presence found either in the Aegean Islands or southern Greece (I honestly forget which).  For you conspiracy theorists, they say the Minoan survivors birthed a long line of other highly intelligent and advanced people: Leonardo da Vinci, Sir Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein being among some of their alleged descendants.

Now, also take the two characteristics of this civilization—their advanced innovations and their sudden demise—and some scholars claim the Minoan civilization may be the factual, historical version of the mythical Atlantis.  The Greek philosopher Plato wrote, "In a single day and night of misfortune...the island of Atlantis disappeared in the depths of the sea."  Disney would have it be discovered underneath Iceland…

"I will find Atlantis on my own—if I have to rent a rowboat!"  Haha, love that movie!

Ancient Greece (pt. 11)

A typical Minoan home featured a lot of artistic and aesthetic elements.  One of the determining factors of a culture's degree of advancement is their art: how much art do they have, and what is the art like.  You'll remember back in the Stone Age the art was for survival (depictions of animals and hunting strategies) and it was small and portable, like the Venus of Wilendorf (since these were nomadic people).  From that scholars would argue (not reflecting any personal opinion here) that the prehistoric civilizations had a lesser degree of intelligence—or, at least, did not get the chance to become too educated due to imminent survival needs, etc.  Well, open the door to a two-story Minoan house that practically resembles a Renaissance villa, and you see this.

As you can see, these are not cave paintings; these are highly complex murals that took careful designing and paint mixing—the colors today still as bold as if they were applied just a couple years ago.  The Minoans had time to develop their art because they had such innovations and were not fighting every day for survival.  Since Ancient Egyptian art was primarily for religious purposes, for the pharaoh in the afterlife, it is possible that the Minoans (who came before the Amarna Period) were actually the first to craft art merely for recreation, for beauty, for art's sake.  Take a look at this wonderful jar fashioned and painted by Minoan artists.

Frescos like this one lead historians to believe the Minoan culture had their own sporting events before the Greeks introduced the Olympic Games.  It shows a game called bull-jumping, which sounds a little dangerous, if you ask me (heehee).

Ancient Greece (pt. 10)

Now go back a ways—about a thousand years—to the island of Crete, off the southern tip of the Greek peninsula.  (Sorry, I try to avoid anachronistic writing, but there's lots of history, ya know!)  Circa 1,700B.C., the Minoan civilization flourished.  What's so special about them is that they were probably the most advanced civilization of their time, featuring innovations that would not reappear until the Roman Empire, in the first century A.D.  Remnants of the Minoan culture on the island of Crete show us first-hand that these people had such advancements as: two-story houses (where the second floor was in use), toilets, running hot and cold water, vibrantly colorful wall frescos, and stunning gold artifacts made some of the finest goldsmiths of the time—among other things.  Furthermore, the people spoke a language totally lost to us and wrote in characters so far unintelligible to us.  It is for this reason the Greeks used the word "barbarian" to refer to people like the Minoans—outside cultures whose languages the Greeks did not understand (from the onomatopoeic word "barbar," which means to speak nonsense—"bar, bar, bar, bar").  But these were far from the primitive kinds of people we usually think of when we hear the word "barbarian."  In fact, apart from just surpassing the Greeks, the Minoans may have been the single most advanced civilization in the world at that time.  Let's have a look at the art…